Moral Acrobatics

How We Avoid Ethical Ambiguity by Thinking in Black and White
Erscheinungsjahr 2021
ISBN: 978-0-19-005765-7
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 192 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 454 g

Although it is difficult for us to fathom, pure monsters do not exist. Terrorists and other serial killers massacre innocent people, yet are perfectly capable of loving their own parents, neighbors, and children. Hitler, sending millions to their death, was contemptuous of meat eaters and a strong advocate of animal welfare. How do we reconcile such moral ambiguities? Do they capture something deep about how we build values? As a developmental scientist, Philippe Rochat explores this possibility, proposing that as members of a uniquely symbolic and self-conscious species aware of its own mortality, we develop uncanny abilities toward lying and self-deception. We are deeply categorical and compartmentalized in our views of the world. We imagine essence where there is none. We juggle double standards and manage contradictory values, clustering our existence depending on context and situations, whether we deal in relation to close kin, colleagues, strangers, lovers, or enemies. We live within multiple, interchangeable moral spheres. This social-contextual determination of the moral domain is the source of moral ambiguities and blatant contradictions we all need to own up to.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Rochat, Philippe

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Allgemeine Psychologie Entwicklungspsychologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Allgemeine Psychologie Kognitionspsychologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Ethik, Moralphilosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- INTRODUCTION Moral battlefield and the illusion of moral unity

- PART 1: FACTS What does it mean to be moral?

- 1 Human self-reflective curse

- 2 Double standards

- 3 Moral acrobats

- 4 Value creation and moral comfort zones

- 5 Hitler was a vegetarian!

- 6 No pure monsters

- PART 2: PROCLIVITIES What guides our moral decisions?

- 7 Moral sphere collapses

- 8 A heart made of abundance

- 9 Spherical alliances

- 10 Exclusivity instinct

- 11 Love as exclusion

- 12 Belonging instinct

- PART 3: MECHANISMS What shapes our moral decisions?

- 13 Blind spots and shortcuts

- 14 Fundamental attribution error

- 15 Clustering and stereotyping

- 16 Pervasive fetishism

- 17 Ingrained essentialism

- 18 Essentialism and prejudice

- 19 Group essentialism

- 20 Self-essentialism

- PART 4: DEVELOPMENT What are the origins of our moral decisions?

- 21 Self-consciousness in development

- 22 Self-deception in development

- 23 Lying and deceiving in development

- 24 Natural roots of moral hypocrisy

- 25 What about culture and development?

- CONCLUSION Human moral frailty

- Postscript: Moral acrobatics and human violence

Über Autor(innen)

Philippe Rochat is Professor of Psychology at Emory University. He received his PhD from the University of Geneva, and studied infants as a pre-doctoral and post-doctoral fellow at Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Johns Hopkins University. A 2006-2007 John Simon Guggenheim fellow, he has written over one hundred scholarly articles and is the single author of five books, as well as the editor or co-editor of three books.